Today I learned that for half a year I have been forced to manually start my wireless network each time I log onto Unix because of a one key typo in my /etc/network/interfaces file. Strangely, I am not angry or frustrated at this. This is possibly the most absurd thing that has happened to me in the past four weeks. Aside from being exhilerated by the possibility of not having to type out three lines on the console or open my "startup_shit" desktop file (which I can now erase), I am also relieved that I can still make very minor screwups that go unnoticed for months upon months before being discovered by one day of curiousity.
The other strange thing I've noticed today is a parking ticket I'd forgotten about. I am incredibly good at racking up parking tickets (I got a $100 from my own school just for being parked for 10 minutes) and forgetting about them. This one comes from the city of Columbia. The fee ($7.00+$5.00 late charge=$12.00, much more reasonable than $100) does not surprise me. What surprises me is that the reminder was mailed from Columbia's "Customer Service" department. Now, maybe it's just me, but I find it odd that a city has a Customer Service department. What this means to me is that my city does, indeed, view me as a "Customer" and not a citizen or a vistor. I am a consumer and Columbia's product? Parking spaces. I won't go into a long speel about the change in paradigm of a locale being a place to live versus now being a corporate venture, but I just want Columbia, and whoever is reading, to know this: Columbia sucks. And really, I feel betrayed that this city, which I have been living in for a week, values me not as a citizen or a patron or a visitor, but as simply a customer - nothing more than something to leech money out of.
Now, of course, we all know why the consumer/producer mentality has value. Because people need to eat and for people to eat people need jobs and for people to have jobs people need to eat. So it's a nice cyclic relationship that pretty much boils down to "make it where you can, don't bother with where you can't." And this mentality applies to games, because games are a product and that's understandable. In fact, I was playing an excellent product earlier today called EverQuest 2, and it got me thinking, "What is the difference between the real world and EverQuest 2?" (aside, of course, from the glaring differences in how the worlds are interacted with). More specifically, if I could create a virtual world as perfect and interfacable as the one I live in, would there be a difference? And the answer goes back to the oldest question, "Where did reality begin?" See, EverQuest 2 is a collection of resources. I know who created the world of EverQuest 2 and I know that someone out there knows the entirety of its contents. Reality, on the other hand, simply is. It is not a collection of resources, resources are not an inherent part of reality. And I don't know who created reality and I don't know that anyone knows its entirety. More or less the conundrum boils down to the fact that while one is run off an engine created by man, the other simply runs.
Now, forgetting any of the Matrix, this is an interesting realization, and I think to myself, "Can I not, too, create a world with mysterious origins?" Some time back I wrote about a game in which the player finds him or herself as a shape in a world with no foreknowledge of what they can expect. I take this to a different level now and say that this game, if it is ever invented, should also have no apparent source here in the real world. I know with today's consumer culture that people to create such a world are far from rare and closer to impossible to find, but still, it is a nice thought. This world would simply appear in people's emails and across the web. It would take careful efforts to hide its origin. It would be free to the masses, no payment plan, no website. There would be no names attached to the project, no customer support line, no apparent server, nadda, zilch. The world would be a total mystery. You might wake up one day and find an email message directing you to a website that simply says "Enter a world without origins" and a link to a client. How exciting would a mystery like this be? Here, in present day, when all is about making the dollars and cents and everyone wants credit and everything has to be patented and taxed? No website. No authors. No reason for being. Nuts, right?
Some might wonder "Why on earth would anyone want to do this you psycho artsy freak?" Well, with no website, no authors, and no reason for being a world also holds no responsibility. The game can be as ruthless and unfair as reality. Can't connect to a server to get your daily fix? Too bad. You've just become a lowly Square when you were once a prominent Triangle? Tough luck. Who are you going to bitch to? And some might say "Nobody would ever play that game." And to that I say that people will play because everyone will want to figure out what it's all about. People will be driven by their natural curiousity to grasp that which they can't understand and they will return again and again to a relentless world and they will study it and people will claim they know the truth and that they have solved the mystery but no one will ever figure it out. Games are bound by many things. Rules. Percieved fairness. Player ability and comprehension. And, most importantly, marketting potential. To make a game like this would not only be sacriledge or mere jest. It would be a total rejuvination of the pioneering spirit. It would be the most original thing anyone has done to date.
